Dirt

This weekend was all about dirt.  Potting soil type dirt.  Not only did some of our few houseplants need a repotting but we decided that more green in the house would be good for everyone.  It's hopeful all the greenery will do it's job of scrubbing the air and adding oxygen.  :-)

Not having any place else to do it, all the dirty work took place at the kitchen sink.  I'm hoping The Tramp will put up some glass shelves in the kitchen window.  I don't think plants balanced on the cleaning wipes or taking up valuable counter space is a long term option!

Pardon the photo quality.  Quick snaps in the evening with a cell phone isn't the best way to show off photography prowess (assuming one has some!).  This pothos was reaching for the floor.  Don't ask me how, as it was still in it's original pot and had almost no decent soil left.  All fixed now.

The Thanksgiving cactus plants love the picture window and show it by growing.  This one really needed a new pot.

Now we have a whole window full of plants.  My dad made the bench a long time ago and Mom used it with her quilting frame for years.  Now it has a new life.  :-)  That's Ivy laying between the bench and the window.

This way she can pop up to look out the window and keep and eye on things.  I have no idea what she was staring at so intently.

A much happier room.  As long as my green thumb doesn't fail me of course.  :-)

We read the reports (and watched the TED talk) that you should have lots of sansevieria in your bedroom to boost the oxygen that gets depleted at night.  With five of us breathing in there it seemed like a good idea!  The recent moving of the bookcases gave the perfect location under each window and cheers the room up too.  Well....it cheers me up anyway.  :-)

The bears and bunnies don't mind either.

 To add to the excitement it seemed time to make Ngaire's bed a new cover.  I hope The Tramp's choice of fleece cheers Ngaire up!  Hmmm.  Maisy's beds could use some stylin' too.

I was going to say.....  Because the kitchen floor was already filthy from the potting episode (almost 20 pots is very mess-making) today was a good day to make chop for Charlie.  Actually it was a good day to make chop because I had already bought the ingredients and Charlie was down to his last little baggie of chop from the batch I made over a year ago.  The fact that I make a tremendous mess in the process is besides the point.

The dogs love it though.  All the cooking, chopping and mixing means plenty of bits knocked to the floor for them to find.  Let's see.  I cooked amaranth, quinoa, wild rice mix, bulgur and 13 bean mix.  There is oatmeal, two whole cereal mixes, oat groats, peas, coconut, carrots, sweet potato, kale, corn, edamame, ginger, sugar snap peas, turnip greens, radishes and tops, broccoli rabe, various hot peppers, hot pepper flakes, chia seed, celery, hemp, parsley......and other stuff.

After his long workday The Tramp was sweet enough to help me bag it all and get it into the freezer.

Another year's worth done.  Phew.  You'd better like it Charlie!

So tomorrow I'll need to get the "dirt" off the kitchen floor.  I'm glad you can't see it!!  Of course it's supposed to be ugly weather for the next few days and 12 dog feet mean it won't be clean for very long.  Sigh.

Hi!

Recently it seems like we are running in place.  Doing lots but not getting anything done.  Standing still, kinda like these mannequins.  That's Stardust posing at the mall.  What a hoot!  :-)

T-shirt quilts are moving through after a very short lull.  Graduation season will be here before we know it.

I joined the Dear Jane club at Wish Upon a Quilt.  I bought the software years ago and it's high time I got started, don't you think?  I'm using my own fabrics.  Ten blocks are done.  I need to get a photo of the whole set.

The blue sofa broke at Christmas and we found this sweet floral number on craigslist.  Turns out we knew the seller too.  One of those "small world" moments.  It's much more in scale with the living room and much more my style.  The kids tell me it's an "old people's" sofa.  LOL  All of our books were housed in our bedroom and I have been anxious to get some of them out.  So we found bookcases on craigslist too.  :-)

So of course this meant weeding through the book collection, disassembling and moving bookshelves, and a major dusting session in the bedrooom.

We forgot we hadn't painted the wall behind the shelving!!!  Duh!

After much exercise moving everything, the living room is a much cozier place.  Next job is to get the clock functioning again.

This little Viking gives everyone plenty of exercise.  ED and I took him to the park last week and after a long session of climbing up and down the wooden stairs he took off running and we had to hustle to keep up so he didn't fall down any slopes or run through the big mud wallows left over from the snow and rain.  Whew!  He jabbers away in his own language all day long and was very cute yelling to the other kids at the playground.  He's learned to say please and thank you (and no, of course) and here he is cheesing for the camera.

This is from dinnertime.  Clearly a very tiring day.  :-)

 And!  I am possibly beginning to get the hang of my fancy camera.  Finally.

Gasp!

Yup.  Two posts in one month....in one week even.  Can you stand it!  :-)

I was so excited by today's sewing project (well yesterday's, I did finish before midnight!) I thought I would quickly post while I'm coming down from the high.  Tee hee.  I found or was pointed to (I can't remember!) this tutorial by Jennifer Jangles.  Rather than printing the tutorial out, I also got to prop up my iPad and follow along that way.  A small thing, but since I told The Tramp that's why I needed an iPad.....  ;-)

Aren't these scarves too cute?  The knit fabrics were chosen because it was pretty much all that JoAnn had to offer that I saw as suitible.  I had a great time browsing the trims.  It took me a while to dig through my stash for the fringe fabrics and I spent way too much time deciding where to place everything.  I finally told myself to "get over it" and got on with the sewing.  :-)

One for ED.

And one for me.

My crystal ball tells me there will be more.  :-)

Pretty soon I'm going to have to get back into t-shirt quilts but at the other sewing machine I've been plugging along on a Bonnie Hunter project, Blue Ridge Beauty, that's been languishing for several years.  It started as a leaders and enders thing but since the Juki has an automatic thread cutter I really don't need leaders and enders.  The bits were hanging around getting in my way so I decided to just get on with it.  Of course when I drag out a vintage machine I'll just have to find another leaders and enders project.  Heh.

It's not so fun or colorful as the scarves but in it's own way very satisfying work.   All the four patches and half-square triangles are done.

They are being turned into blocks.

And three rows are put together.  Pretty boring fabrics, but I cut them before I knew what I know now.  Still....worth finishing.

Bee tomorrow today and I'll be able to give ED her scarf at lunchtime.  Cool.  I'd better go rest up!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, coughing all the way......

Since MIL in New Zealand, is at this moment on Skype commenting about my posting (or lack thereof) I thought this would be a good time to get back into the swing of blogging.  The Tramp and I had a busy Christmas and New Year holiday and then promptly caught the current virus (cough, cough, sniff, blow, hack).  Sigh.  Recovery is ongoing.

During the before-Christmas shopping, sewing and cleaning madness we received holiday greetings from the grands.  Stardust is looking perhaps a bit suspicious of Santa!

Five and Batman are getting so grown up.

Now I realize I don't have a scan of The Viking's photo with Santa.  Suffice it to say, he wasn't particularly happy about meeting the man in red.  Cat lovers however, will appreciate this pic of him napping with one of the cats.  :-)

Some fun photos from New Zealand included this one of Rocky.  We're told he came home from kindy very proud of his self face-painting job.

Magenta looking quite adorable in her Christmas dress.

Charlie and the dogs survived all the hubbub.  Possibly better than we did.  :-)   ED and LZF had family visiting, my brother and his family traveled to North Carolina too, so along with Mom and Dad and the Sailor Son and his boys we had 18 people for dinner one night and all the beds and sofa space pressed into service.  Very satisfying and very exhausting at the same time.

Part of the pre-Christmas rush was finishing up the cleaning and rewiring of this Singer 15-91.  The Tramp made a temporary box to set it in and the day before Christmas Eve found us putting the final parts back together and getting back into the cabinet.  It was touch and go as we had to order a part for the motor at the last minute!

All the wiring is new and we held our breaths as we tested the reassembled machine for the first time....and it worked!  Cool!

Chrismas morning found several large packages "under the tree."  On the hearth is the largest, the 15-91 in it's cabinet.  ED had seen it in pieces any number of times at our house but we managed not to let on it was for her.  I'm looking forward to taking some proper photos of it at her house.

Also under the tree was a Bernina 1000 for me.  It was a Craigslist purchase earlier in December that I wasn't allowed to touch!  But now it's also polished and oiled up and I think I'm really going to love it as my "traveling" machine.

Chrismas was also an opportunity for a technology upgrade, so the laptops have been put to pasture and replaced with an iMac for me and a Mac Mini for The Tramp.

So now he hides behind his array of monitors while I hide behind the big Mac screen.  Seems to be working well for us.  ;-)

One of the Christmas sewing projects was this bear rug/mat for The Viking.  He wasn't interested in the package but when it was laid out on the floor he rushed right over and sat down.  Smart boy!

We received a wonderful calendar full of Stardust photos.  Hmmmmm.  I need a haircut.

The Viking was thrilled with his Snoopy and showed off how he has learned to hug.

Then much to our delight he looked right 'round and patted the Snoopy on The Tramp's shirt.  :-)

Of course he was mostly interested in an old toy.  Now he knows how to stack those rings, no new toy was going to get in the way!

The Sailor Son arrived for his visit highly upset with his car.  He'd spent too much time and money on it and it was just limping along.  So he went on an impromptu car shopping trip with LZF and a friend, and came home with this!

We made sure Mom and Dad got their chance to admire it too.

The boys were very impressed with the retirement community's Christmas tree.  Five kept walking around it looking up and repeatedly declaring it was SO HUGE!

While the truck was being admired in the parking lot we spotted a red-shouldered hawk high in a tree in a spot of evening sun.  I got a lucky photo of it.

I also got a lucky photo this week of another hawk, this time sitting right on the bird feeder pole!  It was a quick photo through a screen but there is no doubt what it is.

I'll try to post a few more pictures of Christmas sewing soon.  I have to test and see if I can blog from my new iPad too!  In the meantime I leave you with those who seem to really enjoy doing laundry.

Stardust, who in this photo looks soooo much like her mother.

And The Viking keeping the clean washing warm, yesterday.  We should all have so much fun with our laundry!

Oops.  Speaking of laundry, the dryer just beeped at me.  Goodnight!  (cough, cough)  :-)